“Domestic or Personal Liberty” 1642–1645allowed in such cases only separation from bed and board, though grounds were
sometimes found – or stretched – to grant annulments with right of remarriage. In
strict terms, an annulment required demonstration that there had been no marriage
because physical defects prevented consummation, or because the parties were too
closely related (violating the incest taboo), or because there was forced consent or a
prior betrothal. Milton’s proposal of divorce for incompatibility moves far beyond
the continental Protestant norm: it has precedent in Jewish law and in a few Prot-
estant treatises, but was virtually unheard of in England.
In his divorce tracts Milton’s experience with Mary Powell is refracted through
two seemingly contradictory portraits of an unfit wife. The primary one is of a wife
unfit for conversation and companionship because of mental dullness and “deadnes
of spirit” (DDD 1, 178): “an uncomplying discord of nature,” “an image of earth
and fleam” (DDD 1, 153), “mute and spiritles” (DDD 1, 151), “a helplesse,
unaffectionate and sullen masse whose very company represents the visible and
exactest figure of lonlines it selfe” (CPW II, 670). Such images do not seem to fit
the social young woman Phillips describes, but they register Milton’s baffled resent-
ment over Mary’s lack of interest in and unwillingness or inability to share the
intellectual pleasures at the center of his life. Another portrait, in DDD 2 and espe-
cially Tetrachordon, is of a wife who slights her husband and contends “in point of
house-rule who shall be the head, not for any parity of wisdome, for that were
somthing reasonable, but out of a female pride” (CPW II, 324): “a desertrice”
(605), “an intolerable adversary,” and a bitter political foe (591). Annabel Patterson
suggests that these portraits may parallel the course of Mary’s relationship with
Milton: from the passive aggression of the early weeks when she simply resisted any
participation in Milton’s activities, to the active defiance signaled by her desertion
and refusal to return.^44 Milton directs his rage outward, so as not to have to admit
what he probably sensed at some level: that he himself – inexperienced with women,
set in his ways – shared responsibility for Mary’s unresponsiveness.
Milton’s divorce tracts demand root and branch reform in the most fundamental
institution of society, the family. And since the Protestant family was seen to be the
foundation of the Protestant state, Milton could and did present these tracts as a
vital contribution to the national struggle, while many of his contemporaries thought
they threatened the very basis of society. Central to Milton’s position is his defini-
tion of the primary end of marriage as a fellowship of the mind and spirit, whereas
most early modern marriage manuals and sermons give priority to the other two
usually cited purposes, procreation and the relief of lust. Milton’s ordering is not
unique, but his passion in defending it is. His bold, even foolhardy, campaign testi-
fies to his confidence in the momentum of reform at this juncture, in the power of
his own rhetoric to affect its course, and in the progressive unfolding of truth through
study and prophetic revelation. All of his divorce tracts address parliament as the
only locus of political power, again registering Milton’s incipient if not yet formal
republicanism.